Eintracht Frankfurt is a
German
sports club, based in
Frankfurt am
Main
, Hesse
that is best
known for its football team.
History
Club origins
The origins of the side go back to a pair of football clubs founded
in 1899:
Frankfurter Fußball-Club Viktoria von 1899 –
regarded as the "original" football side in the club's history –
and
Frankfurter Fußball-Club Kickers von 1899. Both clubs
were founding members of the new
Nordkreis-Liga in 1909. These two teams
merged in May 1911 to become
Frankfurter FV
(Kickers-Viktoria), an instand success, taking out three
league titles from 1912 to 1914 in the Nordkreis-Liga and
qualifying for the Southern German championship in each of those
seasons. In turn,
Frankfurter FV joined the gymnastics
club
Frankfurter Turngemeinde von 1861 to form
TuS
Eintracht Frankfurt von 1861 in 1920.
Pre-Bundesliga history
At the time, sports in Germany was dominated by nationalistic
gymnastics organizations, and under pressure from that sport's
governing authority, the gymnasts and footballers went their
separate ways again in 1927, as
Turngemeinde Eintracht
Frankfurt von 1861 and
Sportgemeinde Eintracht Frankfurt
(FFV) von 1899.
Through the late 20's and into the 30's
Eintracht won a
handful of local and regional championships, first in the
Kreisliga Nordmain, then
in the
Bezirksliga Main,
and
Bezirksliga
Main-Hessen, but never made it very far in the national
championship rounds except for 1932 when they became runners-up in
the German national championship (the final was lost 0-2 to Bayern
Munich). In 1933, German football was re-organized into sixteen
Gauligen under the
Third Reich and the
club played first division football in the
Gauliga Südwest, consistently finishing
in the upper half of the table and winning their division in
1938.
They picked up where they left off after
World War II playing as a solid side in the
first division
Oberliga
Süd, capturing division titles in 1953 and 1959. Their biggest
success came on the heels of that second divisional title as they
went on to a 5-3 victory over local rivals
Kickers Offenbach to take the German
national title and followed up immediately with an outstanding run
in the European Champions Cup.
Eintracht lost 3-7 to
Real Madrid in an exciting
final widely regarded as one
of the best football matches ever played.
Founding member of the Bundesliga
The side continued to play good football and earned themselves a
place as one of the original sixteen teams selected to play in the
Bundesliga, Germany's new
professional football league, formed in
1963.
Eintracht
played Bundesliga football for thirty-three seasons finishing in
the top half of the table more often than not. Their best
Bundesliga performances were five third-place finishes: they ended
just two points back of champion
VfB
Stuttgart in
1991-1992.
They also narrowly avoided relegation on several occasions. In
1984, they defeated
MSV Duisburg 6-1 on aggregate,
and in
1989 they
beat
1. FC Saarbrücken 4-1 on aggregate,
in two-game playoffs.
Eintracht finally slipped and were
relegated to
2.Bundesliga
for the 1996-97 season. At the time that they were sent down along
with
1. FC Kaiserslautern, these teams
were two of only four sides that had been in the Bundesliga since
the league's inaugural season.
It looked as though they would be out again in
1998-1999, but they pulled
through by beating defending champions
Kaiserslautern 5-1,
while
Nuremberg
unexpectedly lost at home, to give
Eintracht the break
they needed to stay up. The following year, in another struggle to
avoid relegation, the club was "fined" two points by the
DFB (Deutscher Fußball-Bund or
German Football Association) for financial misdeeds, but pulled
through with a win by a late goal over
SSV Ulm on the last day of the season. The
club was plagued by financial difficulties again in
2004 before once
more being relegated.
Between 1997 and 2005,
Eintracht has bounced between the
top two divisions and has often kept its fans on edge over whether
or not the side would be demoted, but in the 2005-06 season
supporters learned earlier than is often the case that the club
would stay up, as they finished their Bundesliga season in 14th
place, three points clear of relegation.
In the 2006-07 campaign Eintracht secured the Bundesliga spot on
the 33rd day again.
As of 2007 Eintracht has over 10 million sympathisers in
Germany.
In 2008-09 Eintracht had the
20th highest
attendance in Europe, ahead of such prominent clubs as
Feyenoord,
Liverpool
and
Atlético Madrid.
Success outside the Bundesliga
The club has enjoyed considerable success in competition outside
the Bundesliga.
Eintracht famously lost the European Cup final to Real Madrid on May 18 1960 at Hampden Park
7-3 in front of 127,621 spectators. It is
one of the most talked about European matches of all time, with
Di Stéfano scoring 3 and
Puskás scoring the other 4 for
Real.
In
1967 they won the
Intertoto Cup beating
Inter Bratislava in the final.
They won the German Cup in
1974,
1975,
1981, and
1988, and took the UEFA Cup over
another German team –
Borussia Mönchengladbach
– in
1980. More recently,
Eintracht were the losing finalists in the
2006 German Cup. Their opponents
in the final,
Bayern
Munich, Bundesliga champions that year, qualified to
participate in the
Champions
League. As a result
Eintracht received the Cup
winner's place in the
UEFA Cup where they
advanced to the group stage.
Colours, crest and nicknames
The club
crest derives from the coat of arms of Frankfurt am Main which is in turn is a reference to the one-headed
imperial eagle of the 13th century.
Eintracht's crest is based on the city
coat of arms.
The crest has evolved slowly over time, showing little significant
change until 1980 when a stylized eagle in black and white was
chosen to represent the team. In the centennial year 1999 the club
board decided to re-adopt a more traditional eagle crest.
The official club colours of red, black, and white have their
origins in the colours of the founding clubs
Frankfurter FC
Viktoria and
Frankfurter FC Kickers, which sported
red and white and black and white respectively. Red and white are
the colours of the city coat of arms, and black and white the
colours of
Prussia. When the
clubs merged, officials decided to adopt the colours of both sides.
Since local rival
Kickers
Offenbach sport the colours red and white,
Eintracht avoids playing in such a kit, preferring to play
in black and red, or in black and white.
Eintracht's eagle (Adler) over
the years: the logo of
Frankfurter FV 1911, the red eagle
of
TuS Eintracht Frankfurt 1920,
Sportgemeinde
Eintracht Frankfurt 1967, and the predominantly black crest in
use ca. 1980-1999 before today's more traditional style logo was
adopted.
The club is nicknamed
Die Adler (The Eagles), which
obviously derives from their crest. A nickname still popular among
supporters is
SGE, taken from the club's old official name
Sportg
emeinde
E
intracht (Frankfurt), roughly translated meaning
Sports community Harmony.
The nickname
Launische Diva (Moody Diva) was heard most
often in the early 1990s when the club would easily defeat top
teams only to surprisingly lose to lesser clubs. This nickname was
also held to refer to the what was regarded as the dubious work of
some club chairmen, including for example, the failure to record
the transfer fee of Hungarian star player
Lajos Détári on club books. The
current reign of
Heribert
Bruchhagen appears to have left these practises to the
past.
The players themselves have been referred to as the
Schlappekicker - "Slipper Kickers" in the local slang -
because, in the days before big-monied professionalism, many of
them were employed at a local slipper factory.
Honours
International
National
Regional
- Southern German
championship
- Champions: 1929-30, 1931-32, 1952-53,
1958-59
- Runners-up: 1912-13+, 1913-14+, 1930-31,
1953-54, 1960-61, 1961-62
- Nordkreis-Liga
- Champions: 1911-12+, 1912-13+, 1913-14+
(+ as Frankfurter FV)
Youth
League results
Recent seasons
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from:01/07/1991 till:01/07/1992 shift:(0,-4) text:3
from:01/07/1992 till:01/07/1993 shift:(0,-4) text:3
from:01/07/1993 till:01/07/1994 shift:(0,-4) text:5
from:01/07/1994 till:01/07/1995 shift:(0,-4) text:9
from:01/07/1995 till:01/07/1996 shift:(0,-4) text:17
from:01/07/1996 till:01/07/1997 shift:(0,-4) text:7
from:01/07/1997 till:01/07/1998 shift:(0,-4) text:1
from:01/07/1998 till:01/07/1999 shift:(0,-4) text:15
from:01/07/1999 till:01/07/2000 shift:(0,-4) text:14
from:01/07/2000 till:01/07/2001 shift:(0,-4) text:17
from:01/07/2001 till:01/07/2002 shift:(0,-4) text:7
from:01/07/2002 till:01/07/2003 shift:(0,-4) text:3
from:01/07/2003 till:01/07/2004 shift:(0,-4) text:16
from:01/07/2004 till:01/07/2005 shift:(0,-4) text:3
from:01/07/2005 till:01/07/2006 shift:(0,-4) text:14
from:01/07/2006 till:01/07/2007 shift:(0,-4) text:14
from:01/07/2007 till:01/07/2008 shift:(0,-4) text:9
from:01/07/2008 till:01/07/2009 shift:(0,-4) text:13
from:01/07/1990 till:01/07/1996 color:bl1 shift:(0,13) text: "1. Bundesliga"
from:01/07/1996 till:01/07/1998 color:bl2 shift:(0,13) text: "2. Bundesl."
from:01/07/1998 till:01/07/2001 color:bl1 shift:(0,13) text: "1. Bundesliga"
from:01/07/2001 till:01/07/2003 color:bl2 shift:(0,13) text: "2. Bundesliga"
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from:01/07/2005 till:01/07/2009 color:bl1 shift:(0,13) text: "1. BL"
All time
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from:01/07/1998 till:30/07/2001 color:1d shift:(0,13)
from:01/07/2001 till:30/07/2003 color:2d shift:(0,13)
from:01/07/2003 till:30/07/2004 color:1d shift:(0,13)
from:01/07/2004 till:30/07/2005 color:2d shift:(0,13)
from:01/07/2005 till:30/07/2009 color:1d shift:(0,13)
Green denotes
the highest level of
football in Germany; yellow the second
highest.
Players
Current squad
As of '16 September 2009
.
Players out on loan
Greatest ever team
|
|
| Greatest ever Eintracht Frankfurt team |
The following team was voted the greatest ever Eintracht Frankfurt
team by supporters.
World Cup Winners while signed at Frankfurt
World Cup 1954 -
Germany
World Cup 1974 -
Germany
World Cup 1990 -
Germany
Other World Cup Winners who played in Frankfurt
World Cup 1954 -
Germany
World Cup 1990 -
Germany
World Cup 1990 -
Germany
Medal winners at Summer Olympics
Gold
Summer
Olympics 1996 - Nigeria
Bronze
Summer
Olympics 1988 - Germany
Current club staff
Club Presidents
Managers/Head Coaches
Records
- Home victory, Bundesliga: 9-1 vs. Rot-Weiss Essen, October 5, 1974
- Away victory, Bundesliga: 8-1 . Rot-Weiss Essen, May 7, 1977
- Home loss, Bundesliga:
0-7 vs. Karlsruher SC, September 19,
1964
- Away loss, Bundesliga:
0-7 vs. 1. FC Köln, October 29, 1983
- Highest home attendance: 81,000 vs. FK
Pirmasens, May 23, 1959
- Highest away attendance: 127,621 vs. Real Madrid, Hampden Park, Glasgow
, May 18,
1960
- Highest average attendance, season: 48,324, 2007-2008
- Most appearances, all competitions total: 720, Karl-Heinz “Charly” Körbel
1972–1991
- Most appearances, Bundesliga: 602, Karl-Heinz “Charly” Körbel
1972–1991
- Most goals scored, total: 201, Bernd Hölzenbein 1967–1981
- Most goals scored, Bundesliga: 160, Bernd Hölzenbein 1967–1981
- Most goals scored, season, Bundesliga: 26, Bernd Hölzenbein, 1976/77
Recent top scorers
Stadium information
The inside of the stadium
- Name: Commerzbank-Arena
- Location: Frankfurt am
Main
- Capacity: 52,300 (42,000 seated)
- Inauguration: May 21 1925
- Pitch Size: 105 x 68 metres
- Record Attendance: 81,000; Eintracht Frankfurt
vs. FK Pirmasens, May 23, 1959
- Address: Commerzbank-Arena, Mörfelder
Landstrasse 362, 60528 Frankfurt am Main
- Nickname(s): Waldstadion
The ground was inaugurated as
Waldstadion (Forest Stadium)
in 1925 with the German championship final match between
FSV Frankfurt vs.
Nuremberg.
The facility was renovated for the FIFA World Cup 2006 in Germany.
For Bundesliga fixtures the maximum capacity is 51,500 as on the
East Stand next to the visitor's terrace some spaces are held free
for security purposes.
Among supporters the new name
Commerzbank-Arena is very
unpopular and though the media usually refer to the ground as the
official name, the Eintracht faithful stick with the name
Waldstadion.
Shirt Sponsors
Reserves team
Eintracht Frankfurt U23 is the reserve team of Eintracht Frankfurt.
The team plays as U23 (Under 23) to emphasize the character of the
team as a link between youth academy and pro team. The team plays
in the regular league system in the 4th tier, the
Regionalliga Süd.
Notable fans
Team trivia
Aero Flight A320 in colours of
Eintracht Frankfurt
- Predecessor sides FC Viktoria and
Frankfurter FC were founding members of the DFB (Deutscher Fussball Bund or
German Football Association) in Leipzig
in 1900.
- Jürgen Friedl, (born February
23, 1959) was the youngest player ever to take to the field in a
Bundesliga match at age 17 years, 26 days on August 6, 1975 before
being overhauled by Nuri Şahin of
Dortmund.
- Richard Kress, (born March 6,
1925) is the oldest Bundesliga rookie, making his debut at 38
years, 171 days on the opening day of league play on August 24,
1963. He scored his first Bundesliga goal at 38 years, 248
days.
- Eintracht holds the record for most consecutive away
games without a win: 32 games from August 20, 1985 to August 25,
1987.
- The club also holds the mark for early dismissal of its coach:
twenty men have met this fate in Frankfurt.
- Besides 1. FC Köln and Bayern Munich,
Eintracht is the only club having members in each of
Germany's World Cup winning teams.
- Since
2006 Eintracht has a living mascot, Golden
Eagle Attila from the nearby Hanau
zoo who is
very popular among supporters.
- In 2007 an official Eintracht museum was erected in the
interior of the stadium, where regularly veteran players and
coaches lead guided tours through the club's history.
See also
Other sections within the club
The sports club
Eintracht Frankfurt e.V. is made
up of sixteen sections:
The most famous athlete of Eintracht Frankfurt is
Betty Heidler, the
hammer thrower world champion of
2007. Other
Eintracht athletes
include the
2008 olympians
Andrea Bunjes,
Ariane Friedrich,
Kamghe Gaba and
Kathrin
Klaas.
The clubs rugby union section twice reached the final of the
German rugby union
championship, in 1940 and 1965.
Within the football section, the sports club directly manages only
the youth system and the reserve team. The professional footballers
are managed as a separate limited corporation,
Eintracht
Frankfurt Fußball-AG,
which is a subsidiary of the parent club.
UEFA ranking
Current Club Ranking
Full List
Current National League ranking (Previous year
rank in italics)
Full List
References
- Frankfurter Neue Presse:Eintracht wird den
Deutschen sympathisch
- Eintracht Frankfurt participants at the 2008 Summer
Olympics
- Die Deutschen Meister der Männer DRV website -
Gernab rugby union finals, accessed: 29 December 2008
External links
(furniture)
)
(2) Spanish League
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